Richard
Rush is a legend in his own mind. An inventive filmmaker who
cut his teeth helming biker flicks under a pseudonym in the
1960s, Rush won considerable notoriety in 1980 as the producer-director
of The Stunt Man, a warped blend of satire, action
and comedy about an edgy Vietnam vet who avoids incarceration
by masquerading as a stunt performer on a movie shoot. Rush
spent nearly a decade bringing the movie to the screen, then
won accolades including an Oscar nomination as Best Director.
More than 20 years later, the success of The Stunt Man
is still Rush’s claim to fame—and the struggles behind the
scenes of the picture are still his cross to bear.

On Anchor Bay Entertainment’s recently issued two-DVD set
of The Stunt Man, Rush presents a two-hour documentary
he wrote, produced and directed about the making of his classic
film. Titled The Sinister Saga, the doc is a weird
mixture of gossip, insight and self-congratulation. As the
on-camera narrator, Rush characterizes himself as a wronged
genius, takes credit for inventing a popular camera trick,
and proudly quotes 20-year-old reviews praising him as a cinematic
magician.

To Rush’s credit, The Stunt Man is a unique picture.
In a spectacular performance, Peter O’Toole stars as Machiavellian
film director Eli Cross, who hires the Vietnam vet to cover
up the fact that a stunt man was killed doing a reckless stunt
at Eli’s behest. Rush plays entertaining games by depicting
Eli as either a god or a devil, and O’Toole spends much of
the picture hovering over his set in a thronelike camera rig
held in midair by a giant crane. Eli, named after Rush’s pseudonym
from his exploitation-flick days, is especially vicious in
his manipulation of a starlet (Barbara Hershey), at one point
screening nude footage of the actress while her parents are
watching. The suspense of the movie arises from the question
of whether Eli is willing—or even determined—to kill his new
stunt man in the name of realism.

The movie’s dialogue is often as arch as its storyline. At
one point, a seasoned stunt man notes that the Vietnam vet
is growing bolder by the day: “You’ve already grown those
brass balls,” he says. “Jump up and down so I can hear ’em
clink.”

The
Stunt Man was rightly applauded upon its release for the
energy and invention of Rush’s storytelling, which includes
everything from over-the-top melodrama to subtle character
scenes to broad slapstick. The finest accomplishment of the
picture is how Rush puts viewers in the stunt man’s shoes,
so we never know what’s going to happen next, or whether the
danger we sense is real or imagined.

In The Sinister Saga, Rush details how Hollywood executives
never knew what to make of his odd mishmash of a movie. In
a lengthy running commentary that Rush delivers in various
locations—in his house, in his plane, in a shopping mall,
in movie theaters, even under a table in a restaurant—the
director claims that vengeful executives tried to sabotage
the movie at every possible opportunity. He also describes
himself as a rebel with a cause, telling how at an early screening
for money people, he pretended to shoot his editor to death
after the editor claimed to have recut the picture without
authorization. “It was a way of sending a message,” Rush crows.
“Don’t fuck with the film.”

Rush’s egomania is strangely compelling, in no small part
because of how it reflects the insanity of Eli’s approach
to filmmaking. Yet Rush is not just a freak on display, because
he makes salient points with caustic wit. The director claims
that the subject matter of his movie was stolen for lesser
projects such as the Burt Reynolds comedy Hooper during
the time he was trying to raise money, then explains that
the rip-off projects actually benefited The Stunt Man:
“You could walk into a studio now and propose making a picture
about a stunt man, and they’d be willing to listen because
it was no longer original.”

Still, The Sinister Saga is in some ways as extreme
a viewing experience as The Stunt Man. For while The
Stunt Man is odd because of its dated politics and histrionics,
The Sinister Saga is peculiar because it goes on and
on, with Rush articulating every minute detail that crosses
his mind and forever inflating his image as a heroic martyr.
The synergy between this odd filmmaker and his two odd creations
is captured by this bit of colorful bluster:

“Because
The Stunt Man deals with such obscure themes,” Rush
says, “you might not know how to react—whether to laugh or
to cry. If that happens, just look at the person on your left.
If you can’t see their face, it’s because they’re looking
at the person on their left. That means they don’t get it
either, and we’re all in trouble.”